


A Split in the Skin

by Callisto



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-05
Updated: 2011-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 15:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callisto/pseuds/Callisto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like splits in the skin.</i><br/>-F.Scott Fitzgerald, ‘The Crack-Up’-</p><p>All is not well when Sam comes home early from a training session.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Split in the Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Sam is 9, Dean is 13, and this was beta'd into shape for me by Mara and Ancasta. This was a difficult story to write, but it's still the one I'm most proud of.

The screen door banged, and Dean looked up from Batman whumping the Joker in time to see Sam barreling in with his head down, boots clomping, and a whole swirl of Minnesota snow trying to come in behind him.

“Great, Sammy, bring more winter in, why don’t you? Not like the heating works or any—

Sam snapped the door shut with a vicious back heel, cutting off Dean as well as the Minnesota wind. Eyebrows climbing, Dean watched Sam slowly plant his foot back down and just stand there, staring down at the cracked linoleum while flakes of white melted in his hair and on his dark blue jacket. He was breathing heavily.

Dean sighed and muted the movie. Great. Another dose of I-hate-the-world Sam to screw up his afternoon. Why the kid just couldn’t pierce his nose, wear purple, and live in their room for a couple of months, Dean didn’t know. _That_ he could mock and enjoy forever. But instead he got this broody bitch of a Sam, the one who liked to sulk at the top of his lungs, and the one whose bizarre idea of a ‘fuck you!’ was to sit at the kitchen table and read a text book for hours. This Sam had him clenching his teeth, walking on eggshells, and refereeing arguments between a man and his son which occasionally shook the furniture.

Speaking of which…

Dean narrowed his eyes. “How come you’re back? Aren’t you and Dad supposed to be up at the Miller farm doing training and shit?” Sam was coming off about a month’s enforced rest due to a nasty bronchial thing, which had ended up infecting his ears and knocking his balance off. He always did manage interesting combinations when he got sick, and Dean figured he’d been watching his brother clutch walls and sneeze for more than half the winter. Dad never said, but Dean was pretty sure Sam’s lungs and ears were the reason they’d stayed in one place for most of the winter, and in an honest to God actual house for once.

No answer. Sam was still just standing there, but he’d turned his back on Dean to face the coat rack. Not that he’d taken his jacket off. As Dean watched, Sam’s shoulders went up and then down in one long, and hopefully calming exhalation.

When he still got no response, Dean felt his own temper rise.

“Goddammit, will you turn round? I swear, if you’ve run out on Dad again, I will haul your ass back over there myself—”

“And what? Hit me if I don’t do what you say? Already been done, big brother, but hey, get in line.”

Sam had turned, finally, and Dean’s mouth fell open. There was blood around his brother’s mouth and nose. He was off the sofa in an instant. “Sam…”

“Don’t.” Sam was already backing away, eyes wide, throat working. “Just… don’t, okay?” He stretched his hand toward Dean, palm out, as if he could actually ward him off like that. Then he fled for the stairs.

“Sammy!”

Dean’s answer was another door slam.

 

Dean stood there, suspended in some awful world of quiet, where the clock ticked like a cliché, where a muted Jack Nicholson now looked ridiculous, and where in some far distant land John Winchester had not just hit his youngest son.

But something in Dean knew that he had. He swallowed hard and took himself into the small kitchen. He ran some cold water into a bowl, got gauze, a cloth, and some antiseptic out from one of the cupboards… and then leaned his head on the fridge and closed his eyes for a moment. It was either that or throw up.

No way. No fucking way.

 

He took the stairs slowly, aware that his tongue was out in concentration. He had a bowl of water between his hands, two rotten steps to negotiate, and everything else tucked under his arms.

And trust Sam to have shut the damn door.

“I hate him.” Sam said as soon as Dean got the door open and walked into their room. Sam was lying on his back on his own bed, jacket still on, and the back of his left arm was covering his eyes.

“No, you don’t,” said Dean, sitting down carefully beside him once he’d put the bowl and supplies on the nightstand beside the bed. Such a well-worn litany between them; a pattern and a dance Dean had tired of long ago, but one he was willing to keep going forever.

“Yes, I do. He hates me, so why can’t I?”

Dean curled his fingers around the forearm covering his brother’s eyes. He expected the resistance he got and didn’t tug, just left his hand there. “He doesn’t hate you. He just… I hate to break it to you, but you are not the easiest of kids, dude. And you and Dad? God, but you always go at each other mouth first—”

“So it’s my fault. Is that what you’re saying? Gee, thanks a lot, Dean.”

“No! I’m not saying that, Sammy. Goddammit.” Dean resisted the urge to squeeze down hard on Sam’s arm, because an overwrought, self-righteous Sam with a wobble to his voice and blood on his sleeve was doing Dean’s pulse and equilibrium no good at all.

“Lemme see,” he said eventually, keeping his voice low.

One loud, wet sniff later, and Dean was allowed to peel Sam’s arm away and survey the damage. He thought of smiling, of making light of it, as he always did when Sam got hurt or sick. But any words of comfort died stillborn this time around.

He’d seen worse. Of course, he’d seen worse. Hell, he’d seen worse on Sam, when the little spitfire had taken on a pair of eighth-grade bullies and blackened at least two eyes before getting his own lip and nose busted open.

Only one nostril had bled this time, and the blood had long since dripped and congealed. But Sam’s top lip was also split and had bled more. The cut looked ring-sized, and Dean’s stomach lurched at the thought of his dad’s fucking _wedding band_ doing that.

He swallowed the image down. Literally. Down until it burned in his gut and left his face. First things first; he had stuff to do.

He bent to the bowl, both to soak the cloth in cool water and to take a deep, settling breath. When he turned back to the bed, he was unsurprised to see Sam’s steady gaze tracking him.

“You ready?” He held the cloth out in his right hand and adjusted how he sat so that he could slowly slide his left hand under the back of Sam’s head. “You know the drill, bro,” he said with a small smile. “Gonna sting like hell, and you get ice cream for breakfast if you let me do it quickly.”

He didn’t get a smile back. But he did get a nod. A brave, trusting one that clenched his jaw and breached his heart, as always.

“So,” he said, as he applied the antiseptic. Sam had been quiet and steady for the cloth and water part, but he drummed his heels on the bed a little as the tang of it filled the slit in his lip. Dean dabbed at the cut a few more times with the gauze before he was satisfied that nothing needed stitching or covering. He leaned away. “You wanna tell me what happened now, Sam?”

He put the cloth in the bowl, then stretched back over to put his right hand on the mattress next to Sam’s left hip, his body angling across and up at his brother in a clear signal of expectation.

Sam fingered his lip tentatively, and Dean held back the urge to swat at his hand.

“I just… I didn’t want to be out there anymore, Dean. I did the stupid push-ups, all of them. I did the laps, I did the chin-lifts, I did the weights. It was cold, really cold, and he didn’t say a word to me. Not one word, in two hours out there in the snow. And I almost bust something showing him how hard I was trying to do everything he wanted.” Sam looked down at the comforter, where his fingers found a thread to play with. “But it didn’t matter.” The air seemed to go out of him. He swallowed, and Dean did too when Sam’s voice got smaller. “It never matters, Dean.”

Dean’s right hand wrapped itself around Sam’s neck, thumb stroking under his jaw. Sam looked up, found Dean’s eyes again, and appeared to gather himself up. “So I said no when he gave me the bow. And he hit me.”

“You said no?”

Sam’s eyes skittered away and Dean knew he’d guessed right.

“I kinda… pushed him. And threw the bow on the ground. I think it broke.”

Dean breathed in sharply, but didn’t say anything. Last thing he needed was Sam on the defensive and clamming up. So he made another sweep with his thumb under the kid’s jaw and waited.

“We got mad at each other and I told him I didn’t want to hunt anymore, that I didn’t want to go on his stupid hunts and do his stupid training. And then… and then I said I hated being his son.”

“Sam…”

“I know, I know. I didn’t mean that part. Not really. I was just so mad, Dean!”

Sam was close to tears again, getting gulpy and fast when he talked.

“And then… and then I couldn’t say I was sorry because he hit me, and I was angry again and I wanted to come home, so I ran. And I was scared you’d be mad at me too, but it was too cold to stay outside so I just… I didn’t want—”

Dean stopped him the fastest way he could, by tugging up with the hand under his brother’s jaw and mashing Sam into his neck. A few hot tears spilled, and he let them go unnoticed, giving Sam the time he needed to hiccup his way back to some self-control. For his part, he simply held on. He rocked them a little, remembering a time when the top of Sam’s head smelled of baby shampoo and the shake of a brightly colored rattle could fix everything.

Sam moved his face suddenly, left to right on Dean’s shirt, and he sniffed loudly.

“Hey!”

“Sorry.”

“Like hell you are.”

Sam pulled back, and while his eyes were still wet there was a smile coming through at what he’d just managed to do to Dean’s shirt. Dean brushed the dampness off Sam’s cheekbones with the backs of his fingers and pretended gruffness.

“You done using me as Kleenex?”

Sam nodded and Dean hesitated. He let his hands fall to Sam’s shoulders.

“You know you can’t talk to him like that, right?”

Sam brought his head up, mouth already open. But it wasn’t for nothing that Dean was the one who’d raised him.

“He can’t hit you. He can’t. I’m not saying that. But you have to learn to see a man doing the best he can. Even when it’s not good enough, Sammy. Even when you don’t understand what he’s doing, or why he’s doing it. You have to see…” it hurt him to say the only word he could think of, “…his limits. You have to see them and be quiet sometimes. So I need you to promise me something.”

Sam’s gaze was piercing. Dean pressed his palms into Sam’s shoulders more strongly. “The next time you get mad, I want you to promise to remember this about him. Okay?”

He held that gaze, all the while wondering what Sam was trying to read in him.

A moment later the quiet answer came. “Okay, I promise.”

“Good. Now get your jacket off the bed, dumbass. You got snow everywhere. And I don’t know about you, but I’m starving for blueberry pancakes. So get your ass downstairs and into the kitchen, and let’s see what we can do.”

And just like that, the evening became all about Sam. They had the pancakes, which Dean let him cover in two different syrups _and_ ice cream. Then he let him ping around the kitchen explaining dinosaurs a mile a minute while Sam went through the champion of all sugar rushes.

When Sam crashed, Dean re-energized him with a Coke float, the remote for whatever he wanted to watch, and a farting contest when what Sam wanted to watch turned out to be one of the lamest cartoons Dean had ever seen. Dean forgot sometimes that at nine, Sam still cracked up every single time anybody let one rip, so a lot of giggling and side-clutching followed.

Dean elected himself the winner, opened a window, and sent a yawning Sam upstairs.

“You’re gross, man. Just gross. The grossest big brother ever.”

“Yeah, well, takes one to know one.”

“What?” Sam turned on the stairs, blinking. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Like your face doesn’t make sense.”

Sam shook his head and continued.

Dean waited until he was at the top of the stairs. “And brush your teeth, bitch!”

“Will do, jerk!”

Dean smiled. Mission accomplished.

He looked at the clock and went into the kitchen to put some coffee on.

Now came the hard part.

 

His dad wouldn’t be home until the early hours of the morning. This he knew. And he guessed from the way Sam had totally relaxed that Sam knew it too. Hitting his youngest may have been a first, but John Winchester was nothing if not a creature of habit. Dean also knew that when he came, he would come quietly, with a heavy gait, and with his black jacket smelling of the smoke and whiskey from whichever dark corner he’d sat in all night.

So, creature of habit that _he_ was, Dean went to get one of the duffels. He spread a cloth over the small kitchen table, dipped into the duffel, and proceeded to take apart and put together whatever gun came to hand. It calmed his thoughts and passed the time like nothing else ever did.

Like father like son.

That thought stilled his hand on his favorite sawed-off.

 

At 2am Dean had just taken apart the Glock when he heard the Impala pull up and then his father’s slow and steady steps on the gravel. He set the clip down and got up to pour out two coffees. He’d had one already to help him stay awake, and he figured a second one couldn’t hurt. He put one of the coffees on the table next to the gun pieces, his own he kept in his hands as he stayed standing, his back resting against the sink.

“Dean.” Slow and cautious, face tight, his father gave nothing away as he nodded his customary greeting.

“Dad.” Dean kept his voice the same, though his heart had picked up speed the second the man had stepped through the door. But Dean wasn’t John Winchester’s son for nothing. He could cover up with the best of them. So he stuck one hand in the front pocket of his jeans, drank a mouthful of coffee, and gestured his chin at the mug on the table.

John moved across the small kitchen and pulled out the chair. Dean caught the wave of whiskey and ash as he passed, even though his dad had already hung up his jacket somewhere. John grunted as he sat and pulled the mug towards him. And all Dean could think was how terrible he looked, how fucking _tired_. Dean saw him cast his eyes over the Glock.

“That thing pulls to the right, you know. I think it needs—”

“You can’t ever do that again.”

It hung there, quieter than the ugliness and fury Dean had twisted himself up in knots imagining.

A muscle jumped along his Dad’s jaw, and a finger his father had been scratching at the table stilled. But the man’s head stayed down so Dean took his chance.

“I know he drives you crazy. Hell, he makes me want to spit nails and smother that mouth of his with a pillow half the time.” He thought of Sam from earlier, hands waving like windmills as they became the flight path of a pterosaur in front of Dean’s face. “And maybe we’ve got some time to wait for the hunter in him to take hold. But it’s Sammy, Dad. _Sammy_.” He swallowed. “You can’t be that kind of man for me and him. You son of a bitch, he is all I’ve got outside of you, and you cannot… you cannot fucking hit him.”

He stopped when his voice cracked and died, turning away to blink furiously. When he risked a look back at his father, he could see the whites of his dad’s knuckles tight around his coffee cup. The silence stretched until Dean thought his heart might explode to fill it, then finally his father looked up and cleared his throat.

“Is he..?”

Dean wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “He’s Sammy, Dad. I patched him up, fed him pancakes, and let him watch cartoons. He’s okay. The kid’s a lot tougher than you or I ever give him credit for.” He paused. “I said he couldn’t talk to you like that.”

“He told you what happened?”

Dean bristled at the surprise in the question. “Of course, he fucking told me. Jesus, it’s only you he can’t talk to!”

His father’s eyebrow let Dean know that he had just exceeded the number of curse words allowed in any one conversation.

Dean scratched the back of his neck. “It’s only you he can’t talk to,” he repeated, struggling for calm. “And you… you need to fix that. Sir.” _Before he breaks more than a bow, before he hates both of us, before cartoons and pancakes don’t work anymore, and before he takes those dinosaur-knowing hands and leaves…_ But that loop of panic stayed unvoiced, stayed buried with all the other things he would never say to this man. This man who he loved fiercely, but who he knew in his heart of hearts had never really survived the death of his wife and the burden of two motherless sons.

“I’ll talk to him in the morning. I never… Jesus, I never—”

“I know.”

His dad’s eyes were damp, and that was more than Dean could bear right then. So he cut him off and saved them both.

John drained his coffee and stood. As he passed, he pressed his left hand onto Dean’s shoulder and flexed his fingers in deeply. Dean nodded in acknowledgement, unsure of what they were saying to each other, but grateful they weren’t trying to do it in words.

His father paused at the door, and Dean steeled himself. He looked back at Dean and when he opened his mouth, it was pity, it was pride, and it was prophecy, and Dean’s blood ran cold to hear it.

“That boy will outgrow us both one day, son.”

And then he was gone.

And Dean was left with a cold cup of coffee and a Glock that pulled to the right.

*******


End file.
